Still waiting to hear from St Andrews - is that a bad sign?

[lucasnorth]

DD has applied for English at St Andrews which will be her first choice if she gets an offer. She has heard back from everywhere else she applied. Also, there is an offer holders open day on 5 April so was really expecting to hear back in good time before that.
Does anyone involved in uni admissions know what it means that she has still not heard? Is it likely a ‘no’? Or doesn’t it mean anything to have not heard yet?
Thanks in advance for any wise words…

@lucasnorth so sorry to hear this. Can I ask - is she at a private school?

@lucasnorth - FWIW, I went to St A for English 20 years ago (also an Oxford reject) and I bloody hated it. I joke that I’ll frame my degree certificate (it was a First mind you!) and put it in the downstairs toilet.

Fine, maybe everything up there has changed, but some sub-honours modules were so so dry and they had some utterly bizarre staff there. However, Dr Christine Rauer was absolutely phenomenal. I had one Prof (shan’t yet name and shame) in my second year strike a line through my essay’s bibliography with the margin note “you don’t need to read this much” scribbled. I had a first year tutor hold me back at the end of the tutorial who asked me if I had plagiarised my essay (because she didn’t understand some technical terms I had used. It was so weird I sent that essay to my A level English tutor - who actually went to St A in the 60s - and he confirmed my essay was stellar).

So, if it’s any consolation for your DD, it ain’t all Chariots of Fire wonderment up there. I feel I wasted four years of my life at that institution and it was a bit of a cakewalk to get a First. I don’t say that to gloat or boast, but to emphasis it’s not some bastion of academic rigour.

I had a first year tutor hold me back at the end of the tutorial who asked me if I had plagiarised my essay (because she didn’t understand some technical terms I had used. It was so weird I sent that essay to my A level English tutor - who actually went to St A in the 60s - and he confirmed my essay was stellar).

I suspect she considered plagiarism because it was ‘stellar’ and because it included terms she had not taught you. I presume it was much less common to plagiarise poor essays.

She literally asked me “what’s compar?”

I know it was 20 years ago, but F me, love. Look it up! She said she assumed I had MADE UP the word. Not a funsies neologism…but that I was just nuts. I forgot to mention, she advised me to re-write it as otherwise she would have to mark it as third class.

so yeah, it was a rough undergrad time from there on in

ETA: so, to the tutor, which is it? It’s plagiarised and great…or you don’t understand the words I’ve used and it’s shit?! Just felt like I was being punished because she wasn’t very bright.

Back then, they had TurnItIn software, so could check for cheating. Just pissed me off (and still does today!) that because she didn’t know what some words I had used meant, she was going to give me a bad grade.

Turnitin was after my day. Our essays were handwritten. We did have computers but didn’t use them for essays, though we did for our dissertations. Plagiarism accusations would require the marker to recognise text or a significant change in style.

My friends daughter got the highest GCSE results in her year, All A* and one A, is on track for very good A level results and also got rejected from St Andrews!

I'm so sorry, @lucasnorth . I hope your DD picks herself up after her understandable disappointment. She sounds very clever and I'm sure she will do extremely well wherever she chooses to go.

Fwiw, where we are in Scotland, St Andrew's acceptance/rejection does seem to have a bit of a reputation for being a bit random. Of the few local friends' kids who have/haven't got in, there doesn't seem to be a discernable pattern. It's certainly not always those with the best grades who get in - though all of them are clever, obviously.

This could be hearsay but I have a friend who had some insight into admissions not too long ago and they told me that firstly, StA pays close attention to the PS with regard to actual course content so, and sorry this is going to be a facile example, but if you said you had a passion for Tudor history, and their history course didn't contain that, you would be rejected.

I'm not sure about the private school/state policy but I know private school students who have offers and state school students who were rejected. But apparently they use MOSAIC profiling or similar at house level . (I used to use it at work years ago, but it was postcode level.)

Am I correct in thinking that posters talking about A* GCSEs are referring to iGCSEs, given that GCSEs are now number graded?

They could also be in Wales

Oh, I never thought of that. Thank you.

Bloody hell, I really am shocked at that. How has she got 12 GCSEs, though?

Where else has she applied to? does she have any offers?

Hi - yes she is

At her school they all do either 9 or 10. Then she also did extra maths, and there was an additional one that was a before/after school club but a couple of them were doing so well that they took the exam at the end.
She has had a couple of other offers to now consider. But when she got her results we were all so happy for her, and naively thought it would set her up to be able to choose her path. The places she is now choosing between she could have had much lower grades and still be offered

Thanks @Youngerthanthatnow
As she also applied for Oxford her PS wasn’t 100% tailored to St Andrews (although she was aware of the issue so focussed on things both courses had in common).
I had to Google what Mosaic was, but if StA are trying to broaden access then that could also have been an issue.
I guess we’ll never really know entirely. She is very resilient though and I think will get a lot out of whichever of her offers she firms

Your dd is obviously very bright but her school gave her the opportunity to take 12 GCSE's which is how she achieved the result, the uni will know this so won't take the large number into account. St A's is very tricky to achieve a place at for a multitude of reasons and English is always a competitive subject. If she ends up at Bristol, Warwick, Durham, Exeter etc studying English she will find loads of her cohort have outstanding A levels / GCSE's / Oxbridge or St A, Edinburgh rejections.

St Andrews apparently is harder to get into than oxbridge due to small size and large number of applications (as no interview etc). Mine got in as we think her PS was totally geared towards the St A course. On reflection people prob need to treat it as hard to get in and be super focused on it, as they are an oxbridge or LSE course. If she loves it she could reapply with a very targeted approach?

There is a lot of luck involved with highly competitive courses. It's tempting to dwell on things and to ask what could have been done differently but there isn't much point. FWIW I know someone about to graduate in Eng Lit from St Andrews without a clue what they want to do.